Episode 13 of Survivor 47 gave us a new finale format, the "two-part finale," which is two 2-hour-long episodes with different episode titles that air on consecutive weeks. Almost like Episode 13 is not the finale, but in fact (as Jeff Probst himself said, "the penultimate episode") but what do I know? Anyway, it had some entertaining big moves, some huge characters fell just short of the (actual) finale, and it was generally a good time. Let's just call Ep13 a "semifinale" episode, since at two hours, it's half of the Eps 13+14 total length. If Bake Off can have semi-finals then finals, Survivor can have a semifinale then a finale.

From a fan/audience perspective, there are pros and cons to this new season-ending structure. It still feels a bit weird, because Rachel using her idol to blindside Andy at Final 6 would have made for an amazing standalone episode. Having said that, a longer Episode 13 containing both the Final 6 and Final 5 boots was still really good, and going forward it sort of makes *some* sense as a new standard, because it's likely to have the most high-risk gameplay of the season as advantages (Rachel's vote block at F6) and idols (F5) are expiring, driving them to be used.

In contrast, the obvious problem with this format is nobody is voted out in the finale now. Instead, there's forced Final 4 firemaking. There's only one challenge. We will likely spend a ton of time watching people practice fire. Then once the winner is revealed, we also have to sit through the Aftershow, which is a cheap, unpleasant alternative to the old live reunions, and is agony for the losing finalists to endure. On the plus side, as an audience member, at least you're happy to move on to the next season's trailer when it ends.

Because of all that, though, the new structure doesn't really make sense. Why move all the good stuff into the penultimate episode, and leave the finale as a predictable, obvious, two-hour coronation for Rachel? Why not have at least one vote in the finale? We still have to actually get through the finale to understand why the division was made in this way, but my guess is: Because it doesn't end the way everyone is expecting, and pausing here made the storytelling better.

Is Rachel inevitable? At this point, if this were a normal finale, Rachel feels like the obvious winner. She's absolutely the player to beat, as an all-around physical/strategic/social threat. She has received zero votes (that counted) against her this season, putting her in the 98th percentile all-time for weighted votes against (10 Tribals, 0 votes). She still has one challenge to go, but at this point she's in the 81st percentile for individual challenge performance. And she's 72nd percentile in voting people out (7/10 times, those three misses all from being duped by Andy). If the jury had been asked to vote on the Final Four, she probably wins, 7-0-0-0. Maybe there's a stray vote here or there - Sam gets Sierra's vote, or Sue gets one from Gabe or Caroline - but otherwise, Rachel's overall game has been that impressive, she deserves to sweep.

So if it's that clear-cut when we pause at this point, it must not end up happening that way. Here's what I think happens instead: Rachel loses at fire, and Sam wins. And it could actually be more horrific than that: I think there's a non-zero chance that Rachel wins the final immunity challenge, gives up the necklace to do fire, and loses.

Andy said in his exit interviews that he viewed himself and Rachel as the most likely to win at fire. This very episode, we had Teeny state in confessional (in the post-F7 Tribal segment opening the episode), "Even though me and Rachel were working together, she's the biggest challenge threat at this point, AND she's the biggest fire threat at final four." Later, at the F6 reward feast, Teeny tells Sue and Genevieve, "I will never beat [Rachel] in fire." It's hard to believe all that would make the cut if it ends up happening exactly that way.

So here's what I think happens instead: Teeny beats Rachel at fire. If Rachel's win is being shown as inevitable, there has to be ... evitability? Don't forget, just four episodes back (Episode 10), we saw Teeny's bag catch on fire, and Teeny said the experience "lit a fire under my ass." Since that point, Teeny has floundered strategically, ending up on the wrong side of almost every vote (except the obvious Gabe and Kyle landslides). But what if instead of presaging Teeny seizing control of the game, the burning bag scene was there to foreshadow Teeny literally lighting a fire? Teeny has been wrong about everything for weeks, why can't they also be wrong about "I will never beat [Rachel] at fire"?

The other puzzle piece that falls into place in this scenario is Sam's edit in the premiere. In the opening minutes, Sam gives us his "I'm a wolf in wolf's clothing" quote. As Probst gives his opening monologue, he wraps up with "... to give YOU the vote for the million dollars," and the visuals cut to a nodding Sam right after "the million dollars." At the time, it all screamed "Sam Phalen wins Survivor 47, duh!" but as the season has progressed, that has seemed less and less likely to happen - well, okay, maybe a small uptick after "Operation: Italy," but the trajectory seems to be trending down again now. Still, if Rachel's not there at the end, and Sam can pitch his control of Gata in the pre-merge, his role in Operation: Italy, and getting everyone to turn on Genevieve at F5 by revealing her idol was fake? That's probably good enough to be a winning story vs. Teeny (won at fire, but also drove the vote against Genevieve after learning her idol was fake ... but then voted for Sam) and Sue (had the fabled red paint idol, is not actually 45).

The nightmare scenario: There's a (small? teeny?) chance the Teeny vs. Rachel thing at fire happens *despite* Rachel winning the final immunity challenge, although this sort of leans on some outside-the-show reasoning. And that is: Rachel appears to be close with Domenick Abbate. They were Instagram friends before the season, and Dom is a vocal supporter of Rachel on social media. Dom famously contemplated giving up his F4 immunity necklace to battle Wendell at F4 firemaking in Ghost Island, but ultimately decided to put Angela in instead. Wendell won at firemaking, and after a tied jury vote, was Laurel's tiebreaking pick to win the game over Dom. In his exit interviews, Dom beat himself up over not making that move (which Chris Underwood successfully pulled off in Edge of Extinction, two seasons later). If you're Rachel, and you're very aware of Dom's story, and you're in that exact same F4 IC-winning spot yourself, what would you do? (I'm not saying it's *inevitable*, per se, but it does seem possible, right? Although from the preview at the end of Ep13, my guess is that Sue wins the final challenge.)

It's really the only possible F4 fire permutation we haven't seen yet: In 12 instances since HvHvH, 5 times the fire winner has won the game (once after giving up immunity), 6 times the fire winner has finished second, and once the fire winner has been a zero-vote 3rd-place finalist (poor Jake). So the only remaining possible outcome is the IC winner gives up immunity, only to lose at fire-making (they would have to be pretty widely hated to not then win). Then again, it's probably more likely that someone else wins the F4 IC and puts Rachel in against Teeny. Anyone other than Rachel who wins the final immunity is 100% putting Rachel into firemaking, because she's that much of a threat. Even Sue!

It's also theoretically possible that the jury will value Teeny's taking out Rachel via firemaking more highly than Sam's efforts in the game, because this episode explicitly forecast the "Rachel & Genevieve both miss the finals" outcome with the scene of Rachel and Genevieve being frenemies after the F6 vote, in which Rachel asks Genevieve: "If neither of us gets to the end, who wins?" to which Genevieve immediately responds, "Sam." Would the show accurately forecast that? Maybe, maybe not. Nobody's expecting both of them to miss, so it seems like a throwaway comment. But Rachel's predictions have been accurate in the past, such as when she prophetically worried about Andy flipping, right before the Operation: Italy vote.

No matter how it exactly ends up, Rachel losing at fire and one of Sam or Teeny winning the game seems like the best way to fit the various puzzle pieces of this season's editing together. So how do we get there? I think Sue wins the final IC (her "I want to screeeeeeeam! I'm so pumped!" feels like she just guaranteed her spot in the finals), and is/was still mad enough about Rachel and Genevieve lording their "one of us is going to win" status over the other three to put her ally Rachel into firemaking. But Sue doesn't want to give Sam the chance to earn the jury's favor, so she puts Teeny in against Rachel. Teeny then somehow wins (remember, Devon Pinto was definitely going to win at fire-making, too), and we have a Teeny/Sue/Sam final three.

In that configuration, it's most likely Sam winning, but it's hard to discount that Teeny is still very well-liked by everyone there, despite that not turning into being on the right side of votes. (That can be spun as: Teeny has very little blood on their hands.) Still, let's close this out with Sam's reaction to Rachel and Genevieve telling each other "they're the two best players, one of them is surely going to win": "We'll see about that. If I have anything to say about it, that's not gonna happen." (Ironically, in the scenario above, he has nothing to say about it, everyone else around him does things to end Rachel's run, not Sam. Although Sam did play a major role in Genevieve leaving at F5.)

14 episodes in the New Era? Here's how:

Dalton Ross reports that on the "(Pants) On Fire" podcast, Jeff Probst claimed the 14 episodes happened because: “It really started with CBS asking us months before we shot [the season] if it would be possible for season 47 to do 14 episodes instead of 13.” It's theoretically possible the network actually asked for this, but it seems more likely (as you'll see below) that the show had been asking for this for a long time, because the old seasons used to have 14 episodes in 14 weeks, but for the last decade or so, the network had crammed the season length down to 13 weeks, without changing the episode number.

The new era format changes slimmed the season down to 13 episodes (outlined below) by always having a double-boot episode (usually the split-teams IC/double Tribal). This once again made the show neatly fit into its assigned season length. But the double-boot episode is a requirement: You can't get down to five people entering the finale in 12 episodes without at least one instance of two people being eliminated in one of those first 12 episodes. Here's how that's happened in Eps 1-12 in the new era, keeping in mind you have to end up down one extra player (-1) by the finale:

Season	Extra (non-) eliminations (net player #)
Survivor 41	Double boot in Ep1 (-1); no boot in Ep6 (0); double boot in Ep9 (-1)
Survivor 42	Jackson medevac in Ep1 (-1); no boot in Ep6 (0); double boot in Ep9 (-1)
Survivor 43	Double boot in Ep9 (-1)
Survivor 44	Bruce medevac in Ep1 (-1); Matthew medevac in Ep5 (-2); no Ep5 Tribal (-1)
Survivor 45	Double boot in Ep7 (-1)
Survivor 46	Randen medevac in Ep3 (-1); no Ep3 Tribal (0); double boot in Ep7 (-1)

So every season had a planned double-boot episode, as required. In 41 it was actually *two* planned double-boot episodes, to compensate for no Tribal in the hourglass episode (Ep6). The Jackson medevac in 42 probably canceled a plan to do a double boot in Ep1 that season. By taking out the hourglass in 43 they simplified things, requiring only one double boot, later in the season. They already had to work around that in 44 though, with Bruce giving them an unplanned double-elimination Ep1 on Day 1. So the split-teams IC fed into a single Tribal to compensate, and not the standard split-IC/double-boot episode seen elsewhere in the new era postmerge.

So really, 14 episodes in the new era is a bit of a heavy lift. For 47 to be a planned 14-episode season, they had to use the 44 single-boot split-Tribal format (they did, although why this is better than a normal merge vote continues to elude me) and were able to avoid any early medevacs (which they also did, phew!). It all worked out.

So it's great that the network is happy to let the show go back to 14 episodes airing over 14 weeks, because again, they had previously been squeezed down to airing only 13 weeks a season since around Worlds Apart, after having had 14-week seasons since The Australian Outback. This season compression required back-to-back episodes airing at some point (usually Thanksiving eve, which wasn't optimal). Doubled up airings was okay with hourlong episodes, but would definitely not be great when they're 90 minutes each. So yay for 14 weeks.

Shorter takes

You've gotta dig deep, for reasons: What was the point of the opening leg of the F5 IC, where everyone had to wade in from the ocean then dig sand out from under a log, before stacking their balls? Was it just to make everyone winded and covered in sand? Even without that, the challenge looked like it took hours to complete, with everyone dropping their stacks at least twice, if not more often. While they're digging, Probst is egging them on with, "You know how these challenges go! Sometimes it comes down to a few seconds!"

I dunno, it just seems like the whole point was to make work for the challenge construction crew. It in no way affected the outcome, and most people watching probably forgot it was even part of the challenge by the time it ended. But it did produce a sand-encrusted winner, so I guess that's a success?